Drug removes Alzheimer’s trigger

A drug for Alzheimer’s disease is ready to be tested on British patients after it showed promising results in mice.

Scientists in London have developed a compound that roots out a fundamental cause of the clumps blamed for the brain damage linked to the disease.

Its effect on the physical precursors of Alzheimer’s in mice is so strong that the researchers are preparing for a clinical trial later this year. There are no drugs for treating the disease, which affects 800,000 people in Britain.

Sir Mark Pepys, the director of the Wolfson Drug Discovery Unit at University College London, led the development of the new drug, CPHPC, which attacks an important ingredient in the protein that builds up in the brain and gradually chokes its…

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